


beginnings are contagious there

by clandestinerabbit



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, F/M, Kitten, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 04:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17822090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clandestinerabbit/pseuds/clandestinerabbit
Summary: Sometime in season 2, Farkle comes across Smackle in a situation he would never have imagined. Will he help his arch-nemesis? The answer surprises him.





	beginnings are contagious there

Farkle walked two steps past the girl before coming to a sudden stop and turning over his shoulder. Apparently his subconscious had not deceived him and he would recognize the green blazer and stick-straight braids of his arch-nemesis anywhere. Turning on his heel, he tentatively walked back to hover slightly behind her. “Smackle?”

Starting a little in her crouched position, she almost fell over before leaping to her feet. With a shove at her glasses and a nervous smooth of her skirt, she offered what he guessed was supposed to be a surprised-but-chummy smile. “Farkle! What are the odds of seeing you here.”

“High, actually,” he said, “since this alley lies directly on the path between school and Topanga’s, both of which I regularly frequent. Unless you mean it’s odd for us to meet here, which is true. What are you doing?”

“Oh, you know.” She slid casually to the side, trying to block his view down the alley. With his recent growth spurt, it didn’t work as well as she might have hoped. “Reconnaissance. For our next debate. Not that we need it to utterly demolish you.”

Farkle recognized the strategy, admitted it was a good one, and refused to be distracted. “Smackle, what’s in the box?”

“What box?” she asked, moving back to her original position.

He indicated the cardboard cube behind her with an emphatic nod. “That one you’re trying to hide.”

Making a big show of whirling around, she deliberately scanned the alley about two feet above where she should be looking. “I don’t see anything.”

“Fine. If you don’t want to tell me I won’t force you.” He shrugged, jamming his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “See you at the debate. Where, you can be confident, we will be the demolishers.”

He turned his feet towards Topanga’s and his thoughts towards a smoothie, chalking up the last two minutes as another entry for the Odd Things About Smackle log. Granted, this was stranger behavior than usual, but—

“Wait.”

When he looked back, she had her eyes trained on the sidewalk and her hands clasped nervously in front of her. The knees of her white tights were black with dirt and grime. “I’ll show you,” she said, “but you can’t tell anyone.”

“I promise,” he said automatically, not stopping to think if it was weird that his instincts dictated he extend her the same unconditional loyalty he offered his friends. Lifting her head, she appeared to be weighing his word for a second before deciding with a brisk nod. He couldn’t help but feel a little honored.

She shot a quick look both directions before motioning him to follow her down the alley. Obediently, he mirrored her position and knelt on the opposite side of the box, waiting for further instructions. Behind her glasses Smackle’s eyes were deadly serious. “Don’t make loud noises,” she said. “He gets frightened.” Then she folded back the flaps and sat back on her heels, leaving him to look inside.

It took Farkle a minute to recognize the huddled heap of fur and bone as anything particular, and he might not have guessed for longer if it hadn’t raised its head and mewled pathetically. “A cat?” he said, taking in its torn and bleeding ear, the dirt matting its coat, the non-existent front leg. His hand moved to stroke it without him realizing. “Is it your cat?”

A stinging smack to the back of his hand made him draw back with a sharp _ow_. “He doesn’t like to be touched,” Smackle said fiercely, entirely unapologetic. “He is not my cat. I don’t think he’s anybody’s cat. I found him on the street and coaxed him into this box. I think he’s been in a fight.”

Toting up the many injuries—though it looked like the missing leg was a birth defect—Farkle nodded agreement. “I concur with that conclusion. What course of action do you intend to pursue?”

“I have not yet determined the appropriate course.”

Farkle watched the kitten’s tiny pink tongue dart out to lick its lone front paw. “The obvious course of action is an animal shelter.”

“Negative.” Smackle’s scowl held equal amounts of disgust and horror. “You prepared for that debate almost as well as I did; you know the statistics of adoption rates for shelters. Anyway, this kitten is likely to die without specialized care.”

“Okay, so no shelter.” He tapped his fingers against his leg, considering. “And is there a reason you’re here behind the trash cans instead of taking the kitten home?”

“My father is allergic. I can’t go home.”

“What about a friend’s, then?”

She flickered a question over the rims of her glasses, but seemed to find the answer for herself and resumed staring worriedly at the kitten. “I don’t have. . .friends. Not like you do, that would help me. We have academics in common and little else.”

Farkle looked down at the kitten too, not quite sure what all was showing on his face but 100 percent positive he didn’t want her to see it. It felt weird to be sorry for _Smackle_ —his arch-nemesis, the Napoleon to his Wellington, the flint that sparked flames of intellectual combat—but he was anyway. She sounded so matter-of-fact about her friendless state. Did she not care? Did she not expect it? Had she just never had a friend to know what she was missing? He tried to imagine his life without Riley and Maya and Lucas and lasted about half a second before shaking his head quickly to rid himself of the awful thought. Poor Smackle. “I don’t know what else to suggest,” he said, just to say something.

Smackle was quiet for a minute before answering, her words stepping as gingerly as a baby just learning to walk. One of her fingers slowly stroked the air above the kitten’s back. “Maybe he’ll die anyway, even if I found a way to help him. If so, I know I ought to accept the workings of the natural selection process. But somehow I find myself. . .unwilling to just abandon him to his fate. Does that make me a bad scientist?”

He looked up and met her gaze dead-on, recognizing the existential crisis brewing in the wrinkle between her eyes. He had gone through it recently enough—still was, to be honest. “Maybe,” he said, offering her the best answer he could, “but I think it makes you a good person.”

And then, for the first time ever, Farkle looked at Smackle and didn’t see a smug and smirking competitor, but a _person_ —a genius, like him, a little weird, like him, a scientist who didn’t know what to do with their feelings, like him. They had always said they were too alike, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t _too alike_. Maybe they didn’t have to repel each other all the time.

“I’ll take him,” he blurted out, then repeated it more slowly when she only looked at him blankly. “I’ll take him. We aren’t allergic, and we have plenty of space. And, you know, resources. And we live sixty-seven stories up, so he couldn’t get out. He’d be safe and happy.”

“Oh,” Smackle said, and he couldn’t tell what the quiet, slightly stunned expression on her face signified. Good? Bad? Did she want to smack him again or hug him? Carefully, he moved his hand slightly forward on the rim of the box. He wasn’t actually touching her, but he could have been.

“Will you let me take him, Smackle?”

He half expected her to jump up and take the box with her, ready to deny the kitten life before entrusting him to her bitter rival. Braced himself for it, even. But—

“Yes,” she said, cutting off the sssss sound emphatically. “There isn’t anyone I’d trust more than you, Farkle.”

A few weeks later, they met in the middle of the cafeteria for their traditional post-debate smack talk. She had earned the right to gloat a little, Farkle thought, and half-heartedly tried to think of retorts when he knew they were undeserved. To his surprise, however, her opening salvo had nothing to do with the debate: “How is he?”

“Copernicus?” he asked, “Fine. Fat. His fur is coming in and covering most of the scars.”

“Good,” she said, nodding her head so her hair fell over her shoulders. He did not notice that it looked shiner than normal and nodded his as well, rocking back on his heels.

“Yep.”

A moment or two passed in silent staring around the other person. Then, shyly, she spoke again: “You named him Copernicus?”

“Yep,” he said, unable to muster more under this new line of attack.

“Copernicus is my favorite scientist.”

“I know.”

Her eyebrows went up with as much surprise as he had ever seen from her. “How?”

“You said something in a debate once, about how he was brave enough and smart enough to see the world in a different way.” He shrugged, suddenly embarrassed—that was hardly a confession of love. Conclusions drawn on incomplete evidence. “I inferred.”

“Sloppy reasoning,” she said, “but. You were right. So.”

“It seemed fair,” he said. “You saved him, after all. I just. . .got to help you.” Rushing quickly to fill the space left by a sentence he hadn’t meant to be so significant, he added, “Anyway, he’s my favorite too.”

“Yet another way in which we are alike,” Smackle sighed dramatically. “At least we have our celebratory smoothies to console us. Well, to console you, my arch-nemesis. Victory is its own consolation.”

And for the life of him, he couldn’t come up with a satisfactory response, and he didn’t want to. So instead, he stuck out his hand and said, “well played, my worthy opponent. Allow me to buy your smoothie as spoils to the victor.”


End file.
